As foreign policy analyst Mark Engler notes in his new book How to Rule the World, declining returns on traditional investments in manufacturing and industry since the 1970s go a long way toward explaining today's highly speculative economy.

Financial markets are not described here as anonymous zones of self-regulation but as instruments of private actors enforcing their own buisness interests on state institutions. Structural deficits cause the crises, e.g. massive liquidity withheld from consumers.

The fbi/cia are in part responsible for the loss of American soldiers killed in battle around the world (this is a matter of public record, as shown in part in the Iraq conflict).The US Army, in order to continue the fbi/cia murderous agenda, targets the most vulnerable segment of our population for recruitment as 'citizen soldiers'.

On Wednesday, September 24, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)